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In this volume Mikeal C. Parsons provides an overview of Luke and Acts, reading Luke and Acts in the context of ancient rhetorical criticism as practiced in the Hellenistic world. Parsons first compares Luke's storytelling with narrative techniques of ancient rhetoric. He next compares Luke's interpretation of Jewish sources within the social conventions of Luke's day. Finally, Parsons profiles Luke's specific evangelistic theological artistry, one in which Luke creatively uses Isaiah to call for the conversion of the Gentiles. The depth and breadth of Parson's chapters root Luke's narrative strategy, interpretive moves, and theological imagination in the pagan, Jewish, and Christian contexts of the period.

In churches today, those on the autism spectrum are often at best overlooked by neurotypical church members or at worst infantilized. Viewed as "other," autistic people who feel excluded from the church community abound, and statistics show that they are less likely to attend church than others. Other autistic people do participate in worship but testify to being dismissed when asking for "reasonable accommodations," and they are routinely given fewer formal roles in the liturgy.In Autism and Worship, Armand Léon van Ommen offers an in-depth analysis of the absence and ignoring of, but also the presence of, autistic people in worship. Van Ommen recounts the experiences of autistic people and considers how those experiences might reframe liturgical theology and the worship practices of the church. He identifies the "cult of normalcy" as the root of the marginalization of autistic people. Normalcy is boundary keeping, the protective set of dynamics that determines who belongs to the community and who is excluded. The answer to absence and ignoring is found in presence and availability, rooted in kenosis. Through the act of making himself available to humankind by becoming human, Christ participated in humanity. Believers are invited to participate in the life and prayer of Christ in turn and accordingly make themselves available to one another.The new identity in Christ redefines what is deemed normal and redefines who is "in" or "out." Van Ommen argues that this redefinition results from a kenotic liturgical theology of availability. He illustrates this fresh vision by analyzing the Chapel of Christ Our Hope, a church in Singapore that is centered on autism and provides a paradigm for a renewal of Christian worship. Autism and Worship contributes to liturgical theology and the emerging field of autism theology as well as the practices of worshiping communities.

Silly,"" ""stupid,"" ""irrational,"" ""simple."" ""Wicked,"" ""hateful,"" ""obstinate,"" ""anti-social."" ""Extravagant,"" ""perverse."" The Roman world rendered harsh judgments upon early Christianity - including branding Christianity ""new."" Novelty was no Roman religious virtue.Nevertheless, as Larry W. Hurtado shows in Destroyer of the gods, Christianity thrived despite its new and distinctive features and opposition to them. Unlike nearly all other religious groups, Christianity utterly rejected the traditional gods of the Roman world. Christianity also offered a new and different kind of religious identity, one not based on ethnicity. Christianity was distinctively a ""bookish"" religion, with the production, copying, distribution, and reading of texts as central to its faith, even preferring a distinctive book-form, the codex. Christianity insisted that its adherents behave differently: unlike the simple ritual observances characteristic of the pagan religious environment, embracing Christian faith meant a behavioral transformation, with particular and novel ethical demands for men. Unquestionably, to the Roman world, Christianity was both new and different, and, to a good many, it threatened social and religious conventions of the day.In the rejection of the gods and in the centrality of texts, early Christianity obviously reflected commitments inherited from its Jewish origins. But these particular features were no longer identified with Jewish ethnicity and early Christianity quickly became aggressively trans-ethnic - a novel kind of religious movement. Its ethical teaching, too, bore some resemblance to the philosophers of the day, yet in contrast with these great teachers and their small circles of dedicated students, early Christianity laid its hard demands upon all adherents from the moment of conversion, producing a novel social project. Christianity's novelty was no badge of honor. Called atheists and suspected of political subversion, Christians earned Roman disdain and suspicion in equal amounts. Yet, as Destroyer of the gods demonstrates, in an irony of history the very features of early Christianity that rendered it distinctive and objectionable in Roman eyes have now become so commonplace in Western culture as to go unnoticed. Christianity helped destroy one world and create another.

Across national and cultural borders, the archetype of the fool has played a significant role in how communities interpret and ascribe identity. As Charles Campbell and Johan Cilliers remind us, the Christian preacher, tasked with delivering a paradoxical gospel, is a fool. In a delicate exploration with enlightening results, Preaching Fools uses a diverse representation of fools and foolish actions to show how modern preaching is inseparable from the folly of the cross. Campbell and Cilliers walk the fine line between the ugliness and beauty of the gospel and challenge readers toward a deeper engagement with its unsettling message.

Mark 1-8: A Handbook on the Greek Text offers teachers and students a comprehensive guide to the grammar and vocabulary of Mark. A perfect supplement to any commentary, this volume's lexical, analytical, and syntactical analysis is a helpful tool in navigating New Testament literature. Rodney J. Decker leads students toward both a greater understanding of the Greek text and an appreciation for the textual and rhetorical intricacies not available in English translations.

Mark 9-16: A Handbook on the Greek Text offers teachers and students a comprehensive guide to the grammar and vocabulary of Mark. A perfect supplement to any commentary, this volume's lexical, analytical, and syntactical analysis is a helpful tool in navigating New Testament literature. Rodney J. Decker leads students toward both a greater understanding of the Greek text and an appreciation for the textual and rhetorical intricacies not available in English translations.

The publication of Richard Burridge's What Are the Gospels? in 1992 inaugurated a transformation in Gospel studies by overturning the previous consensus about Gospel uniqueness. Burridge argued convincingly for an understanding of the Gospels as biographies, a ubiquitous genre in the Graeco-Roman world. To establish this claim, Burridge compared each of the four canonical Gospels to the many extant Graeco-Roman biographies. Drawing on insights from literary theory, he demonstrated that the previously widespread view of the Gospels as unique compositions was false. Burridge went on to discuss what a properly ""biographical"" perspective might mean for Gospel interpretation, which was amply demonstrated in the revised second edition reflecting on how his view had become the new consensus. This third, twenty-fifth anniversary edition not only celebrates the continuing influence of What Are the Gospels?, but also features a major new contribution in which Burridge analyzes recent debates and scholarship about the Gospels. Burridge both answers his critics and reflects upon the new directions now being taken by those who accept the biographical approach. This new edition also features as an appendix a significant article in which he tackles the related problem of the genre of Acts. A proven book with lasting staying power, What Are the Gospels? is not only still as relevant and instructive as it was when first published, but will also doubtlessly inspire new research and scholarship in the years ahead.

This volume places the New Testament letters squarely in the middle of all the important letter corpora of antiquity. Chapters cover the basic letter formula, papyrus and postal delivery, non-literary and diplomatic correspondence, Greek and Latin literary letters, epistolary theory, letters in early Judaism, and all the letters of the New Testament. Part I of each chapter surveys each corpus, followed by detailed exegetical examples in Part II. Comprehensive bibliographies and 54 exercises with answers suit this guide to student and scholar alike.

In Angelomorphic Christology author Charles Gieschen demonstrates that angel and angel-related traditions, especially those built upon the so-called ""Angel of the Lord"" figure in the Hebrew Bible, had a profound impact upon the origin, development, and shape of early Christian claims about Jesus.Gieschen's book falls neatly into two halves. The first catalogues the various antecedents for Angelomorphic Christology - Jewish speculation about principal angels, mediator figures, and related phenomena - with chapters on ""An Angelomorphic God,"" ""Angelomorphic Divine Hypostases"" (including the Divine Name, the Divine Glory, Wisdom, the Word, the Spirit and Power), Principal Named Angels, and Angelomorphic Humans. The book's second half examines the evidence for Angelomorphic Christology in early Christian literature. This portion begins with a brief overview of the principal Angel and Angelomorphic Christology from Justin to Nicea and then examines in turn the Pseudo-Clementines, the Shepherd of Hermas, the Ascension of Isaiah, the Revelation of John, the Fourth Gospel, the Epistle to the Hebrews, and the Pauline Corpus.Gieschen argues that Christian use of the angelomorphic tradition did not spawn a new and variant kind of Christology, one that competed with accepted belief about Jesus for early Christians' favor, but instead shows how Christians adapted an already variegated Jewish tradition to weave a single story about a common Lord.

How is life possible in a world of evil, suffering, and chaos? Christians have historically been inept at offering adequate answers as to why people's lives are derailed by sudden chaos and, even worse, at equipping people to live in the throes, or aftermath, of that same chaos. Underlying this confusion is an assumption that evil is a formidable chink in the armor of God's creation. The book of Job challenges such thinking, but its meaning often remains hidden because of a long-standing belief in Christian hermeneutics that the book is about why bad things happen to good people, or about why suffering happens. This is not the case.With In a Vision of the Night Philip Thomas offers a fresh perspective into the book of Job by reading it alongside the fiction of Cormac McCarthy. While some critics have previously identified Joban overtones in McCarthy's work, Thomas argues for something far stronger: a recurrent Joban resonance throughout McCarthy's works. McCarthy's rejection of philosophical theodicy, his anti-anthropocentric vision of the world, his assumed presence of chaotic figures, and the quietly persistent note of hope that runs throughout his books reveal the Joban influence. Thomas contends that knowledge of the book of Job gives insight into McCarthy's literary output; conversely, reading Job through a McCarthyite lens enables proper apprehension of the scriptural text.Through a thematically based theological reading of McCarthy and Job, In a Vision of the Night draws out often overlooked aspects of the book of Job. Further, it reveals that McCarthy, like the Joban author, constructs a theodicy that both rejects the easy stance of a detached and generalized answer to the question of why chaos comes and advances the more pressing question of how life continues in the face of chaos.

The claim that the events of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection took place ""according to the Scriptures"" stands at the heart of the New Testament's message. All four canonical Gospels declare that the Torah and the Prophets and the Psalms mysteriously prefigure Jesus. The author of the Fourth Gospel states this claim succinctly: in his narrative, Jesus declares, ""If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me"" (John 5:46). Yet modern historical criticism characteristically judges that the New Testament's christological readings of Israel's Scripture misrepresent the original sense of the texts; this judgment forces fundamental questions to be asked: Why do the Gospel writers read the Scriptures in such surprising ways? Are their readings intelligible as coherent or persuasive interpretations of the Scriptures? Does Christian faith require the illegitimate theft of someone else's sacred texts? Echoes of Scripture in the Gospels answers these questions. Richard B. Hays chronicles the dramatically different ways the four Gospel writers interpreted Israel's Scripture and reveals that their readings were as complementary as they were faithful. In this long-awaited sequel to his Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul, Hays highlights the theological consequences of the Gospel writers' distinctive hermeneutical approaches and asks what it might mean for contemporary readers to attempt to read Scripture through the eyes of the Evangelists. In particular, Hays carefully describes the Evangelists' practice of figural reading - an imaginative and retrospective move that creates narrative continuity and wholeness. He shows how each Gospel artfully uses scriptural echoes to re-narrate Israel's story, to assert that Jesus is the embodiment of Israel's God, and to prod the church in its vocation to engage the pagan world. Hays shows how the Evangelists summon readers to a conversion of their imagination. The Evangelists' use of scriptural echo beckons readers to believe the extraordinary: that Jesus was Israel's Messiah, that Jesus is Israel's God, and that contemporary believers are still on mission. The Evangelists, according to Hays, are training our scriptural senses, calling readers to be better scriptural people by being better scriptural poets.

In the Baylor Handbook on the Hebrew Bible's most widely used volume, Dennis Tucker provides a foundational analysis of the text of Jonah. This second edition of Jonah is distinguished by the detailed and comprehensive attention paid to the Hebrew text. Tucker's analysis is a convenient pedagogical and reference tool that explains the form and syntax of the biblical text, offers guidance for deciding between competing semantic analyses, engages important text-critical debates, and addresses questions relating to the Hebrew text that are not always addressed in standard commentaries. Beyond serving as a succinct and accessible analytic key, Jonah also reflects the most up-to-date advances in scholarship on Hebrew grammar and linguistics - specifically, this edition relies on the methodology of generative grammar utilized in other recent volumes in this series. This handbook proves itself an indispensable tool for anyone committed to a deep reading of the Hebrew biblical text.

Imperium is a fast-paced and action-packed history of the Roman empire in the tumultuous third century. Too many readers fixate on the golden age of Rome and its apogee under Marcus Aurelius in the second century and then rush to the seismic revolution introduced by Constantine in the fourth century. But in between, from the political chaos following the assassination Commodus to the ascendency of Constantine, is no mere excursus, but one of the most the most bloody, brutal, and vital periods in Roman history.Telling such a story with all its complexity, this book weaves together imperial intrigue, military upheaval, the fratricide and fracturing of the empire, plagues and popes, and the remarkable growth of Christianity during times of intense persecution. The book takes readers on a journey from the marshes of Germany, to the banks of the Euphrates, from the frozen wastelands of Scotland, to the fertile Nile valley of Egypt. It brings to life the emperors, soldiers, martyrs, bishops, and barbarians who shaped a world on the brink of collapse, showing how the fortunes of Rome and the church became increasingly intertwined. This is a book about the making of the Christian church and the remaking of the Roman empire.

In a world full of demigods, heroes, daimones, and Olympians, how did early Christians conceptualize Jesus's divinity? What symbols, images, and literary motifs were available to them as elements of an emerging belief in Christ as divine? Scholars have focused upon the origins of "high Christology" for decades. Only recently have we begun to address how early Christians inscribed and communicated that belief to others in the ancient Mediterranean.In Jesus and Other Sons of God, Daniel B. Glover takes up these important, interlacing questions of formative Christian belief. Glover focuses this study upon the author of Luke and Acts, situating him firmly within his historical, social, and literary contexts. Against those who have asserted that early Christian literature was written exclusively or primarily for Christians, Glover argues that Luke wrote for an audience of well-educated, literate peers—a cadre of elite cultural producers who were interested in new religious movements. With this reimagined readership in mind, Glover demonstrates that Luke not only wrote among and for the literary elite but also as and like one of them. In retrieving the presentation of Jesus's deity in Luke/Acts, Glover elucidates how Luke adopted and to some extent adapted both the rhetorical-literary practices and mytho-theological convictions of his milieu to give expression to the way he understood Jesus.This important study offers at once a more precise picture of Luke's social location, religious engagement, and literary procedure as well as a thorough and historically coherent reading of Luke's Christology in its ancient Mediterranean setting. Scholars and students of New Testament, early Christianity, and religion in antiquity will benefit from the incisive insights yielded by Glover's groundbreaking book.

What if our well-intentioned efforts to promote mental health inadvertently perpetuate systems that cause mental unwellness? What if the resilience we encourage only equips individuals to endure rather than challenge structures detrimental to their well-being? Why do mental health experiences vary so drastically across cultures, with Western societies seemingly posing the greatest challenges for certain conditions? Against the backdrop of escalating ecological dramas that devastate our world and its climate, do we ever wonder what ecological suffering might imply for our mental health? With this poignant, impassioned book, John Swinton invites us to begin exploring avenues toward addressing these daunting and interrelated issues.Seeking Sanctuary, Finding Shalom proposes that we think theologically about mental health as a matter of the collective body of human beings and the welfare of creation. Swinton contends that the ways in which we structure creation—relational, social, cultural, political, spiritual—has a profound impact on our mental health. Failing to recognize the broader dimensions of the task of mental healthcare, we might only ease the severity of a pain or a disease without removing the cause and so never offer genuine healing that brings about peaceable connection with God, self, others, and creation.Guided by the biblical concept of shalom—a form of peace crucial for our understanding of mental health(care)—Swinton takes into consideration the complex and creational roots of human psychological suffering and offers a model of human flourishing defined not by the absence of pain, suffering, and distress, but rather by the presence of God. Such a model seeks not only to deal with the immediacy of the human plight but also to view it within the context of Jesus's cosmic mission to reconcile himself with all things. And so, Swinton contends, as we broaden our conception of mental wholeness to encompass creation at large—the land under our feet, the air in our lungs, the geographical places in which we live and love, as well as the spheres of politics, economics, and culture—we begin the hard and necessary work of repairing dissonance, instability, and mental ill-health. This book does not offer a comprehensive strategy but it does gesture toward a more holistic, more Christoform theology of mental health. Every journey begins with a first step.

In Reading Backwards Richard B. Hays maps the shocking ways the four Gospel writers interpreted Israel's Scripture to craft their literary witnesses to the Church's one Christ. The Gospels' scriptural imagination discovered inside the long tradition of a resilient Jewish monotheism a novel and revolutionary Christology.Modernity's incredulity toward the Christian faith partly rests upon the characterization of early Christian preaching as a tendentious misreading of the Hebrew Scriptures. Christianity, modernity claims, twisted the Bible they inherited to fit its message about a mythological divine Savior. The Gospels, for many modern critics, are thus more about Christian doctrine in the second and third century than they are about Jesus in the first.Such Christian "misreadings" are not late or politically motivated developments within Christian thought. As Hays demonstrates, the claim that the events of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection took place "according to the Scriptures" stands at the very heart of the New Testament's earliest message. All four canonical Gospels declare that the Torah and the Prophets and the Psalms mysteriously prefigure Jesus. The author of the Fourth Gospel puts the claim succinctly: "If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me" (John 5:46).Hays thus traces the reading strategies the Gospel writers employ to "read backwards" and to discover how the Old Testament figuratively discloses the astonishing paradoxical truth about Jesus' identity. Attention to Jewish and Old Testament roots of the Gospel narratives reveals that each of the four Evangelists, in their diverse portrayals, identify Jesus as the embodiment of the God of Israel. Hays also explores the hermeneutical challenges posed by attempting to follow the Evangelists as readers of Israel's Scripture—can the Evangelists teach us to read backwards along with them and to discern the same mystery they discovered in Israel's story?In Reading Backwards Hays demonstrates that it was Israel's Scripture itself that taught the Gospel writers how to understand Jesus as the embodied presence of God, that this conversion of imagination occurred early in the development of Christian theology, and that the Gospel writers' revisionary figural readings of their Bible stand at the very center of Christianity.

In this newest installment to the Baylor Handbook on the Hebrew Bible series, Terry Eddinger provides a practical guide for students and teachers working through the Hebrew text of Malachi. Eddinger addresses the grammatical and syntactical issues within the final book of the minor prophets, while drawing out the larger narrative of the text through analysis of how words and phrases function in larger clauses and paragraphs. Taking the work of translation and interpretation one step further, Malachi follows the poetic prose of the book's catechetical dialogue in order to provide greater understanding of the prophet's specific literary structure. Including chapter-specific keywords and an exhaustive linguistic glossary, Eddinger provides a valuable resource for all to better capture the meaning inherent in this underutilized book.

Reading with the Grain of Scripture is a collection of Richard Hays' most important essays on biblical interpretation published over the past twenty-five years. The studies gathered here range across the New Testament canon, dealing with the four Gospels, the historical Jesus, the letters of Paul, and the theologies of individual writings of the New Testament, including Acts, Hebrews, and Revelation. Taking a stand against the corrosive hermeneutics of suspicion that has characterized much late modern and postmodern criticism, Hays proposes a reading strategy centered on the resurrection of Jesus and the New Testament's message of hope for God's eschatological transformation of the world. Such an approach seeks to read with, rather than against, the grain of the biblical narratives and to discern the deep figural coherence between the Old Testament and the New. Most importantly, Hays' close readings of the New Testament texts exemplify the practice of reading from a posture of trust, reading with and for the community of faith that these texts have birthed and sustained.

In the summer of 1945, Eberhard Bethge began the search for traces of his colleague and friend Dietrich Bonhoeffer. From as early as September 1945, Hermann Pünder provided Bethge a first-hand account of Bonhoeffer's final days. Five years on, another resource arrived in the guise of the British agent Captain Payne Best, whose 1950 publication The Venlo Incident quickly became a bestseller. Bethge was much impressed with the Englishman's account, so much so that he opted for a wholesale incorporation of the relevant section of Best's work in his own narrative. The tale of the final week of Bonhoeffer's life came to be told to an expanding international audience by a captured British spy. So things would remain for over seventy years. But now, Best's account need no longer be the sole and defining narrative voice. Other first-hand accounts and sources have been unearthed.By dint of revisiting original, newly published, and unpublished sources in six languages, much translation work, and input from Hermann's son, Dr Tilman Pünder, John McCabe tells the full story of Bonhoeffer's final week. "Myths" that have grown up and been extensively reiterated can now be exposed, mistakes corrected, and perspectives broadened.Adding more substance, colour, and depth to a previously monochrome narrative, the book's "layered approach," which includes historical material from the time period in question, aims to provide a better framework from within which to understand more fully the witness and contribution of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. McCabe proposes that a richer appreciation of the resisting spirit of Bonhoeffer (and others) may further study of, and engagement with, the Bonhoeffer Corpus.https://www.john-mccabe.com

Jesus of Nazareth continues to fascinate. From antiquity onwards countless people have found meaning for their lives through Jesus' teaching. His life led to the establishment of a community that subsequently grew into what is today the world's largest religion. At the center of the Christian faith stands the confession that this Jesus is both ""true human being and true God.""In Jesus of Nazareth, noted German New Testament scholar Jens Schröter directly addresses the connection between Jesus' humanity and divinity - how the historical Jesus can also be the Christ of confession. Schröter begins by looking at the modern quest for the ""historical Jesus"" from its beginnings down to the present. In the process Schröter isolates key questions of historical method - how can we reconstruct the past? What is the relationship between these reconstructions and past reality itself? Schröter then examines the words and deeds of Jesus, including his death and resurrection, in their Galilean and Greco-Roman contexts. Schröter finally measures the impact that Jesus has had in literature, film, music, and the fine arts. Jesus of Nazareth thus narrates the remarkable story of how a Jew from Galilee became the savior of the world, how Jesus can be said to be both God and human, and how this Jesus continues to exert influence.

In Hebrews: A Handbook on the Greek Text, Cynthia Long Westfall and David I. Yoon provide a foundational examination of the Greek text of Hebrews. The analysis is distinguished by the detailed yet comprehensive attention paid to the text. The authors' exposition is a convenient pedagogical and reference tool that explains the form and syntax of the biblical text, offers guidance for deciding between competing semantic analyses, engages important text-critical debates, and addresses questions relating to the Greek text that are frequently overlooked or ignored by standard commentaries. Beyond serving as a succinct and accessible analytic key, Hebrews also reflects the most up-to-date advances in scholarship on Greek grammar and linguistics. This handbook proves itself an indispensable tool for anyone committed to a deep reading of the biblical text.

In John 1-10 and John 11-21 Lidija Novakovic provides a foundational analysis of the Greek text of John. The analysis is distinguished by the detailed yet comprehensive attention paid to the text. Novakovic's analysis is a convenient pedagogical and reference tool that explains the form and syntax of the biblical text, offers guidance for deciding between competing semantic analyses, engages important text-critical debates, and addresses questions relating to the Greek text that are frequently overlooked or ignored by standard commentaries. Beyond serving as a succinct and accessible analytic key, John 1-10 and John 11-21 also reflect the most up-to-date advances in scholarship on Greek grammar and linguistics. These handbooks prove themselves indispensable tools for anyone committed to a deep reading of the biblical text.

In 1 and 2 Thessalonians: A Handbook on the Greek Text, Kelly R. Iverson provides a foundational examination of the Greek text of 1 and 2 Thessalonians. The analysis is distinguished by the detailed yet comprehensive attention paid to the text. The author's exposition is a convenient pedagogical and reference tool that explains the form and syntax of the biblical text, offers guidance for deciding between competing semantic analyses, engages important text-critical debates, and addresses questions relating to the Greek text that are frequently overlooked or ignored by standard commentaries. Beyond serving as a succinct and accessible analytic key, 1 and 2 Thessalonians also reflects the most up-to-date advances in scholarship on Greek grammar and linguistics. This handbook proves itself an indispensable tool for anyone committed to a deep reading of the biblical text.

Because of its large size, topographic diversity, and southcentral position in North America, Texas has a flora of some 5,480 species in 10 natural regions and at least 77 major plant associations. Central in the state's biogeographical pattern is the Edwards Plateau, a strongly dissected tableland, distinctly bordered on the east and south by the abrupt Balcones Escarpment.This volume brings together eight studies of the Plateau originally presented at a symposium sponsored by the Southwestern Association of Naturalists. The aim is to provide an introduction to the vegetational landscape, including representative photographs, specific research about the history of vegetation patterns, and quantitative information on current structure and succession.

In this two volume set, Toward Benevolent Neutrality presents the text of virtually every significant Supreme Court decision concerning religious freedom and separation of church and state. Also included are essays interpreting the historical background and legal issues involved in each case, beginning with the principal events leading to the adoption of the First Amendment.

Through letters written by one family in post-Reconstruction Texas, Myers shows what life was like in this part of the Old West from a feminine perspective. The detailed letters of joy and struggle on the frontier remind us, Myers points out, that ""broad historical events... are made up of myriad ordinary lives.

In 1861 two religious traditions collided on Saint Helena Island. Already firmly entrenched on the island, the slaves' religion represented a mixture of Southern evangelicalism and African practices. The other, newer tradition would be an imported faith found primarily at the Penn School established for the islanders by Northern missionaries whose Protestantism emphasized citizenship, character development, service, and self-discipline.In The Abundant Life Prevails, Michael Wolfe examines the history of this rich religious life on Saint Helena Island off the coast of South Carolina. Previous works have given extensive attention to the unique linguistic culture of the island called Gullah, but Wolfe is the first to provide a comprehensive treatment of the religious traditions represented there. The story of Saint Helena Island reveals how two vastly different traditions - missionary and islander - emerged from their own environments, how each sought particular goals for the island, and how they eventually merged into a living faith community.In our present era, deeply concerned with the conflict of global and local cultures, Saint Helena is an island whose history is instructive. As educators struggle again with the ideals of "character development", the Penn School offers many lessons. And in the midst of debate about the proper relations between religion and government, the history of Penn demonstrates that American society has always been cut from a seamless cloth; that religion has deeply affected our values, both public and private.

Sixty-six years ago the Catholic Worker movement began with the opening of a shared aprtment as a house of hospitality and the selling of the Catholic Worker newspaper for a penny a copy in Union Square. It began amidst the Great Depression with millions out of work and the foundation of American capitalism crumbling. Most of all, however, the Catholic Worker began with the meeting of two persons: Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin. Their meeting was the effective beginning of the Catholic Worker movement and remains to this day the source of its inspiration.In this diary Marc H. Ellis recounts his spiritual journey among the poor in New York City in the early 1970s. What he witnessed at the Catholic Worker continues to increase in our world today: homelessness, destitution, and other forms of poverty. Yet, the spiritual life he experienced is even more real today as well: commitment, hope, and faith among the poor.